


The Hunter and the Helper

by Xx_0bl1v10n_wr1t3r_xX



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Car Ride, Gay, Internal Conflict, M/M, Murder, Sad Ending, Some Fluff, ezra is trying to be helpful, hitchhikers - Freeform, trying to fix the broken
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27945929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xx_0bl1v10n_wr1t3r_xX/pseuds/Xx_0bl1v10n_wr1t3r_xX
Summary: "Don't pick up hitchhikers they could be murderers.""Don't hitchhike, the person picking you up could be a murderer."But what if both the hitchhiker and the driver are both murderers?
Kudos: 1





	The Hunter and the Helper

**Author's Note:**

> This was a story me and my best friend worked on this together when we were in 8th grade. I was recently going through my stories and decided to post it. I may write more chapters but those would be written only by me.

I was standing on the edge of the road with my thumb out trying to get some idiot to pick me up. I mean, people are so dumb, if you pick someone of the edge of the road,they are either a prostitute or a serial killer. And there is no way in hell I’m gonna be a prostitute.

It began to rain softly, turning the dirt around me into mud. A cool raindrop fell onto my thumb and trickled down the side of my hand. I shifted the backpack on my shoulders. This road was practically deserted, so like, three cars had passed, but none of them stopped. Smart. I was beginning to lose hope, but I couldn’t turn around. I had no place to stay and I was getting impatient with keeping my urge under control.   
I already had a plan laid out in my head. The knife I decided to bring was in the pocket of my backpack, the hilt just barely visible, so I could grab it easily if whoever I was preying on tried to escape. It was very annoying when they tried to escape.   
Another car passed by. The rain came down harder. I squinted my eyes, trying to see through the darkness over the top of my baseball cap. It was worn out, with patches and tears all over the top. I hadn’t washed it in months. There went another car.   
Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted. Crickets chirped all around me, making the road equally peaceful and spooky. I shivered through the one light jacket I had decided to bring. I began to sweat even through the cold. If I didn’t succeed, I wouldn’t know what to do next.  
I peered through the black of the night, which was slowly turning light. Another car was coming down the road. One of the headlights was busted. It started to slow down.   
It stopped in front of me and the front window rolled down.  
“Need a ride?”  
I looked around. “No. I’m standing here for my health.”  
He smiled at me. I noticed the curved lines of his mouth, how he smiled at my sarcasm instead of taking it personally. He was young, around 18, by himself, dark hair and eyes, and a tanned face. He gestured towards the backseat of his car, jabbing his thumb back. “Hop on in and I’ll get you a blanket. Where you headed?”   
He had a soft voice and was surprisingly friendly. Pushover, I could tell from the start. As I opened the door to the back, I said, “What, I can’t sit in the front with you?” I began to hang on the handle, pursing my lips. I could feel the backpack starting to slide off my shoulders. He laughed. “Sure, sit up here with me.” Suddenly I realized I shouldn’t have said that. It would be easier to stab him from the back. Then he wouldn’t see me getting my knife out. Regardless, I climbed in the front seat and plopped onto the musty cushion of his van.  
“So,” he said. “Where to?” He eased the car down the road. The Temptations played on the radio quietly.   
“Umm,” I said, “why don’t I just give you the directions.”  
“Don’t you have a place to stay?”   
Normally people didn’t ask so many questions.  
“I guess not.”  
“Why don’t you stay with me?”   
Everything I had planned started becoming easier. My right hand, which was laying on the seat handle, started to fidget. Back to what I said about people being dumb, NEVER let someone you don’t know stay with you. Ever.  
“Ok.” I said, pushing my dark red hair out of my eyes, not thinking about how we might be staying in different towns. I’ll admit, even I can be quite dumb at times.  
He kept driving down a steep hill until we got to a well-kept house. I stepped out of the car and went to motion for him to come out of the van and join me, but I noticed he was already out and leaning against the door.  
“Huh, I never thought I’d have you right where I needed you,” he said, pulling out a gun from his back pocket and pointing it at my head.  
This was not supposed to happen. People don’t defend themselves anymore. They have lured themselves into a false sense of security, that if you are kind, then the world will be kind back crap. I started to panic a bit, but I didn’t let it show. “Did you know,” I started, “that the average person walks by seven serial killers in their lifetime? They also take 216,262,500 steps while they have lived.”  
“That means with every step you encounter about 0.00008299758% of a serial killer. We drove about five miles. That’s around 10,000 steps, which means I should be seeing 0.1% of a serial killer now.”  
His gun wavered.  
“What? I didn’t understand any of that.”  
“You weren’t supposed to.” I said gently. “It was a distraction.”  
I suddenly lunged at him, grabbing his arm and slamming it against the side of the van. The gun quivered in his hand. “Look,” I said calmly, but firmly, “I don’t want to hurt you. But I don’t want you to hurt me either, so it looks like I’ve got a decision to make.” I pulled the knife out of the pocket of my backpack slowly and raised the blade up to his throat, just barely about to make contact with his skin. He swallowed, glanced at my face with uncertain, shaky eyes, and inhaled sharply. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away from me as much as he could.   
As close as I was to him, I could see the cut of his jaw, how it looked like a 90-degree angle, and I lowered my knife. I couldn’t kill him yet. “Drop the gun,” I whispered.  
He obeyed. It landed with a thud at my feet.   
“I’m not gonna kill you. I just need a place to stay.”  
“Wouldn’t it be easier to break into my house if you just killed me, though?”  
“I only pulled the knife out because you tried to kill me!” I loosened my grip on his arm, and he slowly sank it back down to his side.   
“Can we...can we put our weapons away? Can we bury them?”  
He didn’t make any sense, but I didn’t want to die before killing someone. “Okay.”  
“You have to drop your knife, too, though.” I did. I was still holding his arm. I let go.  
He began walking to a shed behind his house. It was raining even harder now. A spider crawled across my shoes. I let it pass me.   
He came trudging back a few seconds later with a rusty shovel in his hands. I followed him to a patch of dirt. Suddenly he heaved the shovel into the ground with a fierce groan and lifted a pile of dirt out. He looked at me. “Put them in.”  
“What about…”  
“It’s not loaded.”  
“Oh.” I jogged to the knife and the gun and picked them up. I glanced at his face to see how he was handling it. He looked genuinely ready, like he wanted to get rid of that gun for a long time. I dropped them in the hole. He kicked the dirt on top and packed it down with his foot, stamping like he had just stepped on an anthill.  
“Should we go inside now?” We stood next to each other, breathing heavily, staring down at the dirt. The rain made my hair stick to my forehead. I shivered.   
“Okay,” I said hesitantly. I really didn't want to be in the same car as someone I wanted to kill a few seconds ago, even if he didn’t have a gun anymore. But I was cold, stupid and in a place so far from civilization even U.S. Cellular couldn’t get me a signal. I had no choice, really.  
I mean, it was hope someone else would pick me up way out here or, stay with this boy. With this tragic boy who looked like a lost puppy who had been kicked one too many times.  
“Look,” I said, climbing into the van, “I just need you to drop me off at a motel or something. Then we can go our separate ways.”  
He looked me up and down. “No. I was thinking you should stay with me.”  
“You just tried to shoot me.”  
“I needed some money.”  
“I don’t understand you.”  
He stepped up into the van with me, put his hand on top of mine, which was sitting on the console, and looked straight into my eyes. That was intimidating. “I wasn’t going to really shoot you or even take your money. I mean, I was going to take it, but I wasn’t going to spend it on drugs or anything.”  
I smirked, raised my eyebrows. His hand was still resting on mine. I wanted desperately to stuff it down the side of the console.   
“Please trust me. Just one night.”  
I sighed. “Okay.” What other choice did I have? “I just need to be alone for a few minutes, figure out what I’m going to do.”  
“Sure, okay.” His voice got softer. He climbed out of the van backwards, still looking at me. “Don’t get another weapon out or anything.”  
I snorted. “That was the only one I brought. I can’t afford anything else.”  
“I never got your name.”  
“Oh, um. Chase.”  
“Jonas, but everyone calls me Ezra.”  
“That’s nowhere close to Jonas.”  
“Close enough. Both the names are Hebrew.” He stepped out and shut the door forcefully, walking back in the rain. It was then that I noticed the only thing he had on was a tank top and jeans.   
I watched him walk back into the house and close the door behind him, then I shut my eyes and leaned against the head of the seat. I breathed in slowly. The rain pounded on the roof of the van.   
What was I gonna do. He was definitely stronger than me, and when we were outside I saw he was a good foot taller than me. I couldn’t take him in a fight and he buried my weapon. I needed to get rid of him. I should stay with him and keep my eye on him, I figured. I got out of the van and walked towards his house and when I walked through the door the first thing that hit me was the mess.  
Unlike the clean well- kept exterior the interior had piles of clothes and various dead house plants, adding to it were books strewn across the floor and all over the couch. On the coffee table was a glass chess board. It was surprisingly intricate for chess, for Ezra. The glass board was held up by metal towers. The little figurines were carved of solid wood. I picked one up. I think it was handmade.  
“Do you play chess?” Ezra was standing in the doorway to what I thought was his bedroom. He had changed into a dark green t-shirt.  
I hesitated “A little.” I lied. “But I’m not very good.”  
“Do you want me to teach you?”  
I thought about it for a second. I could’ve said no. But that would give me little reason to stay, other than being creepy.  
“Yeah. But as it is nice to sit and chat, I have to use the bathroom. Where is it?”  
He looked beyond my shoulder and pointed with a smile. “Down that hallway, second door on the left.”   
I took my book bag off and placed it on the sink when I entered the bathroom. I stood there for a second, studying my emotionless face in the mirror. Who had I become? A softie? A pushover? He snapped his fingers and I instantly came running. Not typical me. The very thought made me shudder. I yanked at the faucet and splashed my face with the cold ass tap water that tasted terrible. When I stood up again I observed where I was. A very old toilet sat in the corner. It looked like it hadn't been cleaned, let alone used, in years. On the top of it sat a picture frame of what looked like Ezra and his mother. It was the only thing that was absent of a thick layer of dust in the house. It was undebatable, she looked exactly like him, their dark eyes and hair made you think about the godforsaken mystery of humans who had the nerve to attempt to kill another. She had her arms around his shoulders from behind. He wore the same tank top. They were smiling. Genuinely smiling.   
I couldn't take it anymore. I burst out the bathroom, sprinted down the hall and looked around frantically for Ezra. He was sitting on an armchair reading The Great Gatsby. I scrambled to floor level and put my hands on his knees. He looked up, concerned.   
“Ezra. Can you be honest with me for ten seconds?” My breath came out shaky.   
He closed the book. “Of course.”   
“Have you ever killed anything? Anything big?”   
“I killed someone once. I'm still a fugitive. That's why I live in the woods. Once I'd killed him, I knew I'd fucked up.”   
I was panting. “Why?”   
“He hurt my mother.”   
I stopped breathing. Something in me made the muscles in my legs crank and work myself up to his face. Then I kissed him.   
At first he had his eyes wide open, then he took his left hand and grabbed my neck. His eyes fluttered closed. Maybe this was my urge the entire time. To love someone because I had never been loved, therefore I didn’t know how. It all seemed so simple now. How his olive shirt was fitted to the curves of his body. His position in the chair. The book clasped in his hand, thrown around my back. I dug my arms into the plush of the chair as the realest sense of happiness I had ever had rushed through every organ of my body. He loved me. He pushed his lips into mine and loved me.   
I was the one to pull away. My arms were still on his chest. “He hurt your mom?”   
“My dad, yeah. He hit her. I took his pistol and shot him straight in the heart.”  
“On impulse?”   
He nodded. “On impulse. Nobody touches my mom like that.”   
“I never met my mother.”   
“Or your father?”   
I shook my head. “Neither one. Didn't care until I saw your picture.”   
“Which picture?”   
“The one in the bathroom of you and your mom.” I started to cry. I had only cried once in my life, when a group of boys pushed my twig slingshot into a bush. I was eight and the slingshot was the only thing I had. Actual tears rolled down my cheeks. Real tears. Ezra leaned to me and wiped them away with the side of his thumb.   
“How old are you, Chase?”   
“Nineteen.”   
He grinned. “I am too. Do you even have a home? Where have you been living?”   
“With my cousin Abigail. She hates me, so I ran away, couldn't stand her. I needed some kind of escape... I guess you were it. Look at us, my plan worked.” I laughed and started crying even more.   
Ezra stood up and removed every part of me touching him from himself, then he made a path through the room by kicking books aside as he walked to a couch. He swiped his hand over the cushions to get dirt off of it, then whipped his head around and finally grabbed a pillow resting on a coffee table. He made his way back through the lazy path and picked me up bridal style.   
I snorted. I wasn't insecure for once, he was definitely strong enough to carry me. I guess I was apprehensive. If his behavior was going to be like this for as long as I was staying with him I'd never see Sarah again.   
I stared at my fingers holding onto his shoulder, aware, using the corner of my eye, that he was looking into my eyes. I felt them stinging. I wanted so badly to tip my head into the crook of his neck and collarbone and fall asleep. When did I get so poetic? Did he fucking do that to me too?   
The happiness I obtained slipped away as he put me down gently on the couch, lifting up my head for the pillow. He crouched down and whispered in my ear, “I'll be right back,” as chills fell down every place imaginable.   
I watched him walk to his bedroom and thought about everything that happened that night. Only an hour ago I was fighting this boy, about to potentially kill him. And I kissed him fifty minutes later. Damn.  
I had only one thought before I slept. Why? I thought. Because you fell in love. Idiot. You swore to never do that.   
Ezra came back a little while later with a thin blanket. He placed it over me. “Do you want me to stay with you?” He had real concern in his eye. “You look horrible.”   
I wanted to say yes. I really, really did. But only for a second. I really was becoming soft. “No,” I said. “I’m fine.”   
He stood up. And looked down on me. He sighed.   
“No. You’re not,” he decided. He turned and headed back towards his bedroom. He stopped.  
“Get me if you need anything.”  
“Can I have my childhood innocence back?”  
He laughed. “Good night.”  
I slipped into sleep, and had the dream.  
Blood. It was all blood. Splattered on the walls, the floor. And the screaming. Suddenly I was running. My legs where flying under me, my breath coming out in short burst. But I didn’t feel scared or regretful. I felt happy, ecstatic even. Then my dream changed.  
Ezra was standing in front of me. He placed his hands on my shoulders, looked me straight in the eyes and said “I am so disappointed in you.”   
He wrapped his hands around my neck and started squeezing.   
I woke up abruptly, sitting up on the smelly couch. My breathing was quick and at first, I had no idea where the hell I was, but then I remembered yesterday. The more I thought about it, the redder my face became. I decided to see if Ezra was up yet.   
As I peeked into the crack in the door, I saw Ezra lying on his bed. I could hear faint snoring and I couldn’t help but smile a little. I shook my head and thought to myself, Stop it. You can't let yourself get too attached.  
I went back to that shitty couch and sat down. I was scanning the room for a book I could read when I spotted a book that I read often when I was much younger. It was a Sherlock Holmes novel. I picked it up and smiled as I remembered how much I loved that book, so I decided to read it again to see if I remembered anything.  
After about half an hour of reading, I could hear a loud thump come from Ezra’s room. I flung the book to the side of me and scrambled to see if he was okay. You do weird things when you're in love. As I pushed the door open, I could see Ezra lying on the floor beside his bed, groaning. I slowly walked over to him.   
“Um… Are you ok? You just seem to be having a little problem there.”   
He grinned painfully. “Haha. I fell out of bed, did I wake you up?”  
“No, I was already awake because of your loud ass snoring,” I lied. “How do you even fall off your bed anyways?”  
“I rolled over? Unless you pushed me.” He yawned.   
“Push you? I’m not exactly a huge fan of physical contact.” I said as I held my hand out for him.  
“I’m hungry.” He yawned.  
“This is literally your house. I don’t know where the food is.”  
He took my hand and hauled himself up then nudged his way past me and took off down a short hall. I went to follow him but stopped when I noticed a picture on the clutter nightstand in the corner.   
It was an uncropped photo of Ezra, his mom, and what I assumed was his stepfather. The picture wasn't like the one in the bathroom. They all were just a little too close together for it to be natural. And Ezra's smile seemed forced. I remembered l what he said about his stepfather hitting his mother and wondered if it was a daily occurrence.   
I walked into the kitchen and Ezra was practically inhaling a box of Trix cereal. “Those are for children and the taste like shit.”   
“Shut up and eat.”  
I sat down and glanced at the filthy table, strewn with empty (unhealthy) cereal boxes and wallets. Lots of them.   
They were all different. Small, large, pink, yellow, purple. And there were a lot of them.  
“I’m not the cleanest person, but you really need to get your shit together. That’s what we’re gonna do today.”  
He looked up from his cereal. “And then what?”  
I stared at him. “What else would we do?”  
“Chase, I have a book I really think you would like. I want to read it to you. It’s my favorite book, it’s from my childhood, but it’s really important to me, so I’ve never told anyone else about it. You’re my only exception.” He went back to eating.  
Normally people would not stare at each other for this long, but I really was not sure if he was joking or not, so I continued to stare at his dark hair bent over the bowl of cereal. “So you’re telling me,” I began, “that we’re gonna clean your shit up, and then read your lovely childhood novel? Because the last time I checked, your childhood wasn’t so great, was it?”  
He looked back up at me and blinked.   
“Forget it. I’m sorry. What is it?”  
“The Outsiders,” he mumbled.  
I grinned. “No wonder Ezra could relate to good old Ponyboy.”  
He tried not to, but he grinned. “Shut up.”  
I reached over from across the table and touched his dimple. It wasn’t a common dimple, not like a circular hole, more like a tiny, tiny gash, because it was horizontal. I dug my finger into it and he grinned as hard as he could so it would show up more. Suddenly I stopped and laughed. “Stop clenching when you’re smiling, you’re gonna crack a tooth.” I lowered my hand to his and rubbed his knuckle in a circular motion with my thumb.   
“I think I like you. Like, a lot.”  
He smiled. “Please never leave.”  
I smiled back “I’ll never leave as longs as your alive.”


End file.
